Democrats are “f***** right now,” one strategist warned, as others said the party risks becoming a “permanent minority” against Donald Trump’s MAGA movement - as the party struggles to find its footing in the current political environment.
After Kamala Harris’s devastating defeat against Trump in November, the Democratic Party is struggling and is “deeply fractured, and rudderless,” strategists, elected officials and leaders told Politico in a scathing report.
“I don’t know if Dems realize how f***** they are right now as a brand,” one anonymous party strategist told the outlet.
While the Trump administration steams ahead at a breakneck speed, the Democrats have been distracted by party infighting over their lack of resistance to a short-term spending bill. They have offered little organized resistance to the Trump agenda that is reshaping the federal government.
Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who believes the party needs to change its approach when reacting to Trump’s aggressive agenda, said that if the party doesn’t get its “s*** together” soon, Democrats risk becoming “in a permanent minority.”
“We really got our a**** kicked in, and especially in the Senate, we could have been left a gigantic, smoking hole in the ground,” Fetterman told Politico. “We could have easily lost Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, and we could be staring down, 56-44.”
Others expressed frustration that no lessons appear to have been learned from the 2024 presidential election and the issues that appealed to voters.
“In the wake of the election, I kept asking people what the campaign could have done better. And the answer was a whole lot of nothing,” Pennsylvania-based strategist Tommy McDonald told Politico. “I’m not sure folks are open to learning any lessons.”
There is a belief among some in the party that they will take back the House in the 2026 midterms, which Rep. Seth Moulton said was a “dangerous assumption.” Moulton publicly questioned allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports following the 2024 election defeat. The Trump campaign repeatedly attacked Harris and the Democrats over the heated issue.
“I think it would be a massive mistake not to come out of this election and make changes,” Moulton said. “Everyone said we would win the House this year. Now people are saying, ‘Oh, well, we’ll surely win the House in the midterms.’ That’s a very dangerous assumption when we lost across the board.”
Former House Speaker Kevin McCathy recently said that Trump has broken the Democratic party. “It is a huge mess,” said the former speaker, The Hill reported. “If you think about it, they are leaderless. There’s no message, and their polling continues to drop. They are now fighting among themselves...It wasn’t just that President Trump won the election. He has now broken the Democratic Party.”
The former speaker warned that the two minority leaders — Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer — would not remain in their posts at the current rate. The two men, he argued, had little to no control over their own caucuses and were not making themselves known to the American people.
McCarthy insisted the real figures of leadership in the party were Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, who embarked on a nationwide tour last week to rally disaffected Democrats in the wake of Trump’s inauguration.
Additional reporting by John Bowden
